Re: What Combustion can do that After Effects Can't

[Pablo Hill] "Combustion has what, excellent integration with Maya, Rebit and 3dStudio. Who uses Rebit other than architects anyway?"

Actually, Combustion has superior integration with 3DS Max, not Maya. And the other product is called Revit, and I'm not sure that Combustion works better with it than any other design software.

Which application is best for you will ultimately depend on the kind of work you do. For visual effects compositing, Combustion has superior mask and roto tools and the recent addition of the Colour Warper also gives it a clear advantage here, for matching plates. It also plays well with Flame and Smoke, so it is very useful for passing stuff up to those systems.

For motion graphics it is a different story. A few years ago AfterFX was no more competitive here either, but in recent years their updates have clearly been aimed at making AfterFX competitive or superior. Adobe is a huge company and can afford to throw resources at a problem that Autodesk can only dream about. It's animation editing is now at least as good as Combustion [probably better], it has a great tool for text animation and teh vast array of plugins available give it a real edge, although most of them will also work in Combustion, too.

In other ways it is more swings and roundabouts. AfterFX may have better animation tools for text but the rendered quality of text/paint from Combustion is visibly superior [or was last time I looked, a couple of version ago]. AfterFx may provide superior integration with Photoshop and Illustrator but Combustion works well enough with both of these formats. Combustion also has an advantage when working with 3DS Max, although AfterFx can also do most of the same things.

But the really big advantage that Combustion has, regardless of the kind of work you do, is its workflow. It may not be as full-featured as AfterFX but its approach to any task is far more elegant and the Schematic View allows for greater flexibility. Capsules provide a great way to create your own custom tools and they also allow you to build containers for expressions so that they can easily be shared. G-Buffer Builder and the selection tools are very strong points of difference and the Edit Operator makes it much easier to manage complex pieces, like a TV commercial or music video, as well as speeding up your work. Combustion's 3D workflow is also a lot better than AfterFX's bolt-on 3D.

If you want a list of things to shut your friends up, try these;

- Selection tools [Paint as a whole]
- Masking
- Particles
- Edit operator [easy to dismiss but much better in practice than you would think]
- G-Buffer Builder
- Colour Warper
- Schematic workflow
- Capsules
- Flash Export

I'm a contractor for Autodesk at the moment but, unless otherwise stated, all opinions expressed here are my own.